If I could only use one word to describe this book, it would be WOW! Incredibly powerful and heartbreaking, this inside look at how wrong our justice system can go was truly sobering. As an American, we all like to think justice will always prevail, but this book showed just how far from the truth that is. I was so invested in the stories the author told, and every time I remembered that these are real people whose lives and families were ruined over a wrongful conviction, it was a gut punch all over again. At the risk of sounding crass, I kept thinking of umpires/referees in sports who refuse to overturn calls they got wrong, because they needed to be right. The prosecutors had clear and convincing evidence exonerating these men, yet refused to do so, mainly for the sake of optics. It's truly appalling, and I hope this brilliant book gets into the hands of more people.

Are you deeply moved by stories of wrongful convictions? THE SING SING FILES: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice is a profoundly heartbreaking piece of investigative journalism that introduces readers to Sing Sing, a maximum security prison that houses many of Manhattan's most violent criminals, and also home to a handful of innocent men.

Dan Slepian, host of Dateline NBC began working with wrongfully convicted individuals decades ago as a side project outside of his Dateline projects. This book primarily follows JJ, who really began Dan’s interest in this type of work, but also shares the story of other men within Sing Sing. Through these men’s stories Dan captures the helplessness and gross injustice of wrongful congvisions. Readers are left to wonder–how could this possibly happen? How does our criminal legal system allow this to continue to happen over and over again?

We hear directly from wrongfully imprisoned men as they explore the systemic injustices that stripped them of their freedoms, dignity, and the life they once knew.

This book is one that will stay with me long after I close the final page.

Many thanks to Celadon and NetGalley for an electronic ARC in exchange for an honest review.

📖ARC REVIEW📖

The Sing Sing Files by Dan Slepian
(AVAILAVLE NOW)

Thank you to the author and @celadonbooks for an advanced copy of this book.

💭BLURB💭
Dan Seplian is a journalist at NBC News. In this book, he chronicles his effort to bring justice to those who have been wrongfully incarcerated for crimes they didn't commit. This books speaks on corruption in law enforcement and within the legal system of the United States

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

If you think that "Just Mercy" by Brian Stevenson is important, you should also pick up this one. An honest, inside look into the lives of people who have been wronged by the system that is meant to protect us, this book will help open your eyes to the flaws in our justice system and give you hope that there are people out there trying to right these wrongs. Many movements of thought and introspection. This should be essential reading.

Dan Slepian, long time Dateline producer, has written an enraging and engaging book for true crime and social justice readers. Some portions are so unbelievable you would think this is a work of fiction.

This debut about the wrongly convicted managed to be both heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time. It evoked so many emotions. Slepian's decades long investigations of six incarcerated men claiming to be innocent led to eye-opening, award nominated Dateline episodes prior to this book. Slepian felt he had a moral obligation to finding the truth and was relentless in that regard.

The journey Slepian took was reminiscent of Bryan Stevenson's (Just Mercy) but Slepian did not have the legal background. He learned along the way making both lifelong friends and enemies.

This was a page turner in the most maddening way. It should be required reading in all US high schools.

I want to thank Celadon Books and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was not my vibe. I appreciate the ability to be autoapproved, it just wasn't my style of book

Riveting! A true crime story for true crime fanatics, I have loved Dateline for years and was excited to read that Dan Slepian wrote this novel. Well written, informative and one I won't forget.

Couldnt get into the writing. It was a good story, but the writing just didnt get me to truly see the story.

This was excellent. I listed to the audiobook and the author does a wonderful job narrating. The content is fascinating- I learned so much about the court system and the appeal process, much of it heartbreaking. The author helps bring justice to six innocent men through decades of research, advocacy, and determination. The author is a Dateline producer which added an interesting component to the story.

Thanks to the publisher for sharing an audiobook with me. All opinions are my own.

Full review to come on Goodreads and Amazon. Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for a review copy

It's very thought-provoking and moving! Slepain writes how he initially started doing research for a different project, and some wrongfully landed in his lap. Then, he put the cases on the back burner while working on other projects. But, he was receiving letters from these men and then he had a cop find out the evidence that proved some of these guys were innocent and still charged.
This is really eye-opening for issues that happen in our justice system and how many roadblocks can be put in front of someone trying to free innocent men. Slepian worked and documented many things and he worked hard to be able to free these men without his help it is very possible these six men would still be wrongfully imprisoned.
I realize that there are probably several that have been wrongfully convicted but I did not realize how in-depth it would go with detectives and DAs going to just "solve" the case to help their numbers even when they have evidence that the one they are charging did not commit the crime. This is a must-read for those who love true crime and also want to know about the other side of true crime when someone is wrongfully convicted. I extend my gratitude to Celadon Books and Netgalley for the extraordinary opportunity to read and review this one!

This was very engaging and well-written, but still not easy to get through. The egregious mistakes and calculated misrepresentations that occurred in the criminal cases outlined by the author are gross and bewildering.
How does one go into a public service position, like law enforcement, and not do their damndest to make sure innocent people don't spend DECADES in prison for crimes they didn't commit? Or worse, manipulate facts and ignore blatant truths to serve personal agendas? I don't get it.
This book also demonstrates why prison reform needs to be a much bigger priority.
Thanks to #netgalley and #celadonbooks for this #arc of #thesingsingfiles by #danslepian in exchange for an honest review.

Going into this read, I knew the justice system was flawed, but I never knew it could be as bad and corrupt as this book highlights. The author does a phenomenal job of going through various cases to exemplify the deeply rooted issues of the justice system. This book was easy to understand, powerful, and a critical read for americans in my opinion.

This book is a really great mix of true crime and investigative journalism - I really think true crime girlies who are interested in the aftermath of when someone gets convicted (particularly when they are actually innocent) will like this one!

Nonfiction is sometimes hard for me to get into but I absolutely did not have that problem with this book! I was engaged the whole time and actually listened to it all in one day because I needed to hear what happened. There were moments that gave me goosebumps and even more moments that made me want to scream at our (in)justice system.

This is a really important book that takes a bite sized look at how wrongful convictions affect individuals and their families. Though only 6 stories were told here, it horrifies me to think about how many exist beyond what are in the pages of this book.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the ALC. All thoughts and opinions are my own and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

WOWOWOWOW @danslepian ! What an incredible book filled with true stories of the unjust realities plaguing our criminal justice system. As a #dateline investigative journalist, Mr. Slepian unearthed some disturbing details that will make the average American's jaw drop. These are actual cases in which he helped free wrongly-accused inmates after tireless effort.

One would assume these cases were tried in such a manner that mistakes were made by prosecutors and juries in convicting these people - that the accused must have found themselves on the wrong side of the law because they had made bad decisions or were in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, this book contradicts these long-held assumptions; these were often cases where the accused were either nowhere near the crime scene, were not criminals beforehand, and/or had strong alibis to support their innocence. I was blown away by these stories, knowing that any day, any one of us could be wrongfully convicted, and it would take decades to clear our name despite overwhelming evidence proving our innocence.

Dan Slepian's writing was engrossing, and I found myself unable to tear myself away. True crime followers, you'll love this book. But even people like me who have never watched a full episode of Dateline will be lured in by the stories Mr. Slepian has presented.

Kudos Mr. Slepian for not only uncovering the truth, but for giving these people back their rightly-owed freedom. I am in disbelief that this happens so frequently in this great nation of ours. But I am also grateful to learn of these stories and men like JJ who have turned something that could have destroyed them into something that holds others up and gives them hope in these rather hopeless situations.

Many, many thanks to partners @celadonbooks
and @netgalley for these #gifted review copies.

2024 marked the 50th anniversary of mass incarceration. Throughout those fifty years a great deal has been published on the system, the players, the victims, and the wrongs perpetuated in the interest of “justice.” There has been relatively too little, however, written on wrongful conviction, and even less that goes as deeply into the institutions, processes, and biases that shape bad outcomes in the criminal justice system as Dan Slepian’s The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice. This is a riveting and provocative contribution that points up the extraordinary harms caused by false imprisonment and wrongful convictions.

Slepian’s journey to these insights is a sort of coming-of-age narrative, of the opening of the author’s (and others’) eyes to the dark side of justice. After his twenty-year experience helping to investigate cases and exonerate six men, he is still searching for a “genuine safeguard against injustice.” While the substance of the narrative is truly compelling and infuriating, Slepian’s conclusion, that “the safeguard…is us” (196) is slightly unsatisfying and feels more pat than expected from the full sweep of the story he’s told.

Much of the book is a procedural: police, prosecutors, media. But the procedural narratives are often inverted to focus on how the innocent are brought to extreme injustice, and Slepian explores several important themes. For example, he draws clear portraits of the ways that evidentiary issues go awry, including for example, the extraordinary problems with eyewitness reliability. He points to eyewitness misidentification as the leading cause of wrongful convictions (104), and describes multiple factors that feed into unreliability, such as bias, police pressures (during interrogations, at mugshot reviews, and lineups), and general issues with memory. He also addresses the cycle of incarceration, in which kids with parents in prison have a higher likelihood of going to prison themselves, and asks how we can bear – let along justify – such a consequence for kids of wrongfully incarcerated individuals. Slepian is careful to clarify that the problem is a systemic one; it is “more than just incompetent or malevolent police and prosecutors; it’s a failure of our collective will to hold people in power accountable.”

Throughout, Slepian pairs expected practices with actual practices, as recorded in notes, documents, video and audio recordings, trial transcripts, and other sources. These juxtapositions are an effective tool for driving thoughtful engagement, and his characters (and their arcs) add not just believability, but gravitas and authenticity to the process stories and the shared sense of discovering the deep, intractable reality of injustice in the criminal justice system. Among these characters are police, such as Bobby Addolorato, lawyers, including Steven Cohen, and family members of the men wrongfully convicted and imprisoned. The coming-of-age revelations of the truth of injustice are a linchpin that unites everyone in a kind of state of disbelief. Even after twenty years, Slepian seems to still feel that disbelief. Perhaps this undergirds his hope in the collective us and the possibility of righting the ship.

The Sing Sing Files is a timely and serious analysis of the failures and consequences of the American criminal justice system and the tragic legacy of mass incarceration. The waste of time, money, and lives shows the inhuman side of the system but leaves the way forward unresolved. This is a needed addition to the literature and helps with necessary awareness raising (as Slepian’s related Dateline broadcasts have done), but the paradigm shift is still in the wings.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this eARC.

The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice by Dan Slepian is a compelling and deeply moving account that delves into the heart of the American criminal justice system. As a book reviewer, I found this narrative harrowing yet inspiring, and a testament to the power of perseverance and the quest for justice.

Dan Slepian, a veteran producer for NBC’s Dateline, takes readers on a two-decade journey that began with a tip about two men wrongfully convicted of a 1990 murder. This tip set the stage for a series of investigative reports and ignited Slepian’s relentless pursuit of truth and justice. This book meticulously chronicles the painstaking process of uncovering evidence, navigating legal hurdles, and the emotional toll on everyone involved.

What stands out in The Sing Sing Files is Slepian’s unwavering commitment to the cause. His narrative is not just about the legal battles but also about the human stories behind the statistics. The six men whose lives were upended by wrongful convictions are portrayed with depth and empathy, making their plight resonate on a personal level. Slepian’s friendship with Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez, one of the wrongfully convicted men, adds a poignant layer to the story, highlighting the bonds formed through shared adversity.

The book also serves as a powerful critique of the systemic flaws within the criminal justice system. Slepian’s detailed account of the obstacles faced in overturning wrongful convictions underscores the need for accountability and reform. His writing is informative and evocative, painting a vivid picture of the challenges and triumphs encountered along the way.

For readers who appreciate investigative journalism and stories of resilience, The Sing Sing Files is a must-read. It sheds a light on the injustices faced by the wrongfully convicted while celebrating the tenacity of those who fight for their freedom.

Sing Sing Files is above all a tale of hope, courage and raw tenacity.

Slepian’s work is a reminder of the impact one individual can have in the pursuit of justice, making this book a significant contribution to the True Crime and Investigative genre.

I finished this in a day because I couldn’t put it down. Dan Slepian crafts a rich, interesting narrative nonfiction that any American will appreciate. I learned something. Was it the deepest thing I’ve ever read? No, but it’s not a research piece; it’s meant to be Dateline in book form, and it executes what it wanted to do.
While I appreciate that Celadon provided the ebook, I supplemented it with the audiobook and enjoyed the audio more because the book is read by the author.
Celadon continues to publish great books. Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this.

The criminal justice system in the United States is extremely far from perfect. I know a lot of people like to think that it works the way it should, but it doesn't. Once someone is found guilty it's hard to overturn that verdict. For those actually guilty of a crime it isn't a big deal, but there are a lot of innocent people sitting in prison that are serving times for crimes they didn't do.

The Sing Sing Files talks about the exoneration of men from Sing Sing prison thanks to the diligent work for Dan Slepian among others. He highlights the problems in the judicial system and what these men went through. The stories he talks about just scratch the surface of the innocent individuals sitting in prison. I also enjoyed seeing Dan's trajectory in working with Dateline and shining a light on exoneration stories. I think stories like Dan highlights in this book are extremely important.

If you've enjoyed Just Mercy and/or want changes in the criminal justice system, I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to Celadon Books and Netgalley for a copy in exchange for review consideration.

This book really packs a punch in its short 224 pages, and I highly recommend it to everyone. As a non-fiction book, it is very readable. As a book about wrongful convictions, it is pretty impartial. It focuses just on the own author's journey of recognition that perhaps wrongful convictions in America are a real problem (something that we as a country tend to be somewhat willfully ignorant about), and includes a ton of valuable information along the way.

Wrongful convictions and the criminal justice system have played huge roles in my professional life. I have worked with the innocence project, and as a public defender, and I have viewed these cases from a different perspective working for the federal judiciary, assisting to resolve appeals in habeas cases (including those of actual innocence). I also have a friend and colleague whose partner was exonerated after spending 17 years on death row for a murder he didn't commit. To say that these issues matter to me is an understatement. For that reason, although I loved this book, I thought that it was almost too impartial. Prosecutorial and police misconduct played a huge role in the cases profiled in the book, but you didn't necessarily feel as outraged as perhaps we all should while reading. Even when the system "works," and people are rightfully convicted, I personally still feel a little outraged about how much we fail these people, and their families, throughout the process, which ultimately also fails our communities in general and victims of crime as well. Anyway, I digress...

Dan Slepian is a journalist, and a good one, so he really cut to the core of some of these cases, very neutrally, and also he was very lucky to have some assistance from a unicorn (aka hero detective) and other players in the system throughout. One thing that I loved about the book was the humanity he brought to our incarcerated community members (some of whom were rightfully convicted), and the friendships he shared with them. I also appreciated hearing about his work with different organizations, and his travel abroad to compare the rehabilitative prison conditions elsewhere to the punitive ones in the united states. He also very accurately portrayed the uphill battle that people face post-conviction, especially in the court system, which also highlighted just how important it is that we have fair and just prosecutors (and police). It is all too easy in those positions to get caught up in a culture of wins and losses, and lose sight of justice.

Overall, there is much to be gained from this book! Someone once said, "an innocent person in prison is as common as a pigeon in a park," a quote that I truly believe. If you choose to read anything that I've recommended since I've started reviewing books, I hope you choose this one!

The Sing Sing Files by Dan Slepian offers a powerful, insider’s perspective on the American criminal justice system. As a producer of Dateline, Slepian writes with an intimate understanding of wrongful convictions, which are disturbingly common. The book exposes the heartbreaking stories of individuals trapped in the prison system due to these miscarriages of justice.

Having worked within the Indian legal system, I have seen firsthand how delays and errors in justice can ruin lives, and this book deeply resonated with me. It’s maddening that even today, wrongful convictions occur sometimes because evidence is buried to expedite convictions. Slepian skillfully reveals these flaws.

What truly sets this book apart is its exploration of the devastating consequences wrongful convictions have on families. As someone who’s been involved in support groups focused on trauma education, I’ve seen the lasting emotional toll these injustices cause.

The Sing Sing Files is a must-read. Not everyone in prison deserves to be there, and this book is a sobering reminder of that reality.

Thank you to Celadon Books for providing this thought-provoking read.